This article was reported by Carter Dougherty, Nelson Schwartz and Floyd Norris and written by Mr. Norris.

[European nations scrambled on Sunday night to prevent a growing credit crisis from bringing down major banks and alarming savers as troubles in financial markets spread around the world, accelerating economic downturns on three continents.

The German government moved to guarantee all private savings accounts in the country on Sunday, hoping to reassure depositors who had grown nervous as efforts to bail out a large German lender and a major European financial company failed…]

The reserves increased from $60.1 billion a month earlier, the Central Bank of Nigeria in Abuja said today on its Web site. The reserves peaked on Sept. 18 when central bank Governor Chukwuma Soludo said they stood at $63 billion, enough to cover 16 months of import requirements.

The bank did not give any explanation for the decline in the second half of the month. Record oil prices have helped the West African country build the biggest currency reserves in sub- Saharan Africa.

Nigeria has Africa’s biggest hydrocarbon reserves, with more than 30 billion barrels of crude oil and 187 trillion cubic feet of gas. The country, which Bloomberg data show was the continent’s top oil exporter in July and August, is the fifth- largest source of U.S. oil imports.

South America seems to be a little behind in this crisis in that it’s not smeared all over the front pages of four different countries I checked. However, they are watching and concerned:

Coordinated play promised on economic crunch

Facing the storm jointly

According to Boudou, “Massa is a team player and the president has asked him to coordinate the government’s actions (regarding the crisis).” The committee is to include representatives from the Central Bank, AFIP, ANSeS and the pension fund and stock exchange monitoring agencies.